THE WANDERER, SEPTEMBERR 30, 2004

JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH

The War on Tobacco

     President Bush's conservative defenders are trying 
to find significant differences between the most 
profligate spender ever to occupy the White House and his 
liberal opponent. Some, like NATIONAL REVIEW, are citing 
his theme of an "ownership society" in which private 
property, not centralized government, is the decisive 
force. But is this anything more than empty lip service 
to conservative principles -- the hallmark of the Bush 
administration?

     The Justice Department, following through on an 
initiative from the Clinton era, is using 
anti-racketeering laws to pursue a $280 billion suit 
against major tobacco companies. Its strategy is to 
destroy the entire tobacco industry by treating it as a 
criminal conspiracy. Industry lawyers say the government 
will have a hard time proving its case in court. Maybe 
so; but still, how did it get so far?

     Here is a breathtaking assault against private 
property and personal freedom by anti-smoking zealots. 
Their goal is to wipe out a small but traditional 
liberty, not by legislation, but by imposing financial 
ruin on a large sector of the American economy. As with 
Prohibition, it would inevitably result in massive 
lawbreaking, corruption, and contempt for law.

     But at least the anti-liquor zealots who imposed 
Prohibition on the country in 1918 had the scruples to 
amend the Constitution (meeting the tough standard of 
ratification by state legislatures) in order to extend 
federal power over what were formerly areas of liberty; 
today that's no longer necessary. Federal bureaucrats 
whose names we don't know can take the initiative by 
themselves, with no opposition by their nominal boss, who 
is sworn to uphold the Constitution.

     Why doesn't Bush quash this outrage? Probably for 
the same reason he hasn't vetoed a single act of Congress 
in his entire term of office: He simply has no serious 
desire to arrest the growth of the government. He and his 
partisans prefer to pretend that he is directing its 
growth in a "conservative" direction.

     John Kerry is right to charge that Bush is leading 
us in the "wrong direction." The trouble is that Kerry 
would continue leading us in the same direction, with 
only minor modifications. Operationally, the two men and 
their parties agree in principle. Our entire political 
system, including the news media, tries to disguise this 
basic truth of American public life. And so the very 
propositions we ought to be vigorously debating are 
almost entirely ignored.


Rathergate

     Dan Rather and CBS NEWS have finally admitted that 
their sources for the "expose" of Bush's National Guard 
days were dubious indeed. Their chief source was a 
disgruntled Texan ex-Guardsman named Bill Burkett, who 
has been gunning for Bush for years. But the red-hot 
story quickly turned into an expose of the major news 
media themselves.

     These media, it transpires, have lost their 
authority with the public. The fraudulence of Burkett's 
documents was almost instantly detected and revealed on 
the Internet by numerous independent bloggers; Rather's 
"scoop" backfired terribly, and he was unable, as in the 
past, to dismiss criticism as partisan. Some of his 
critics weren't even pro-Bush.

     "Alternative media" have decentralized the news 
business. The public no longer regards the big networks 
as virtually official sources of information; or rather, 
it distrusts even official sources in a way it never used 
to. Rather and his colleagues are used to having the last 
word, but that was yesteryear.

     The shock of this episode has made the whole news 
business shudder. Traditional journalism is being shoved 
aside by amateurs; a free market in information, which 
everyone professes to want, is changing the rules. 
Journalists pride themselves on being skeptical of the 
government; but they aren't nearly skeptical enough, and 
now they themselves are in the unaccustomed position of 
facing intense and intelligent skepticism.

     Rather became famous during the Watergate scandal, 
when he bedeviled Richard Nixon. He no doubt thought he 
was merely repeating his triumph by presenting a story 
that might destroy the Bush presidency. Instead, he 
himself wound up being compared to Nixon, with phrases 
like "stonewalling," "modified limited hangout," and 
(worst of all!) "Rathergate" being used to describe his 
obdurate refusal to come clean.

     Far from seeing the media as "adversaries" of the 
government, many people have come to see the relation 
between the big media and big government as essentially a 
partnership. The "liberal" bias of the big media is 
really a deep and pervasive bias in favor of big 
government. The media's occasional hostility to 
politicians is usually directed against those they 
suspect of being insufficiently liberal: Nixon, Reagan, 
and both Bushes, for example, as well as prominent 
Republicans in Congress.

     If there is one thing about the current President 
Bush it's tempting to applaud, it's his occasional 
defiance of the major media. He seems to understand that 
they no longer speak for public opinion.


Quagmire in the Desert

     Robert Novak reports that a consensus is growing 
within the administration that U.S. forces must be 
withdrawn from Iraq sometime next year. Whether or not 
the scheduled elections come off in January, it's 
becoming clearer and clearer that the occupation is 
failing. American casualties keep rising, guerrillas 
control much of the country, and the news is insistently 
grim, with kidnapings and beheadings reported almost 
daily.

     Bush continues to speak optimistically about the 
march of freedom in Iraq, as he did at the United Nations 
recently, but nobody takes such talk seriously. Bush 
himself is the only one now talking it, against the 
contradicting background of bloody headlines. And it 
hardly seems to describe the realities of life in 
"democratic" Baghdad.

     Plans to make the occupation a success sound 
increasingly like barely disguised exit strategies. The 
puppet government itself is far too insecure to provide 
security for Iraqis once American troops leave. It's all 
too reminiscent of the "Vietnamization" efforts that were 
once expected to allow a decorous U.S. withdrawal from 
Vietnam.

     It's less and less clear who the enemy is. Communism 
was at least a more palpable enemy than "terrorism." When 
Bush can only call the foe "thugs and terrorists," the 
point of this war is pretty elusive. The other side isn't 
about to surrender; what satisfactory conclusion is 
possible? How can progress even be measured?

     Toppling Saddam Hussein was the easy part; when he 
fell and fled, supporters of the war scoffed at the 
pessimists' warnings of a "quagmire." They insisted there 
was no parallel with Vietnam. And in fact the dry deserts 
of Iraq, devoid of Vietnam's forests, marshes, and rice 
paddies, made "quagmire" seem the wrong metaphor.

     But today the Vietnam analogy seems apt, even 
irresistible. The war looks more futile every day. And 
Bush seems to be trying to put a brave face on it until 
election day. After that, we may see a change of course.

                 +          +          +                  

     What if Charles Lindbergh had been elected president 
in 1940? Philip Roth's new novel raises the question in 
horror. I offer a different view in SOBRAN'S, my monthly 
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                                        --- Joseph Sobran

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